Marron squinted her eyes when a blast of golden light seemed to explode out from the dragon. The wind suddenly picked up and whipped around them viciously, and her hair flew into her face; the palm trees that surrounded them bent back and forth with the force of its strength. She lifted her arm and held it over her eyes to shield herself from the bright white sparks and rays that the dragon was emitting. With one final, amazingly bright blast of pure white light, the dragon transformed into a lightning bolt that snaked its way back down to the dragonballs. The floor beneath her feet shook slightly and then the dragonballs were suddenly flying through the air like shooting stars, blasting off to opposite corners of the world. Then, just as if someone had taken their hand and waved all of the dark storm clouds aside, the sky began to clear. Blue peeked out between the rolling black until there was nothing left but a wisp of dark color on the horizon, which seemed to seep back into the earth. Marron could feel the burning sun on her face once more and the wind died down to nothing.

In the clearing where the dragonballs had once lay, Tayhei was standing with her arms wrapped around herself and her head down. It was strange picture to her --- she had never seen Tayhei display any kind of emotion, really. But just when Marron was about to ask what had happened, the older girl straightened up and brushed herself off. When she turned around, Marron was shocked to see an expression that wasn’t depressed, but furious. Tayhei’s bright green eyes were narrowed down into catlike slits, her jaw was locked and her usually pretty mouth was drawn into an unattractive snarl. Tayhei stalked towards them purposely, her sandals clicking on the clean white floor with every step. But when she reached them, she kept on moving, brushing past them without even one word. Marron thought she saw those green eyes flick over to glance at her, but she couldn’t be sure --- Tayhei was moving too quickly for her to have really seen anything. She was just confused as to what Tayhei was so furious about, and why the girl had switched so suddenly from the emotionally touching pose earlier. Had something happened that she didn’t know about? Had the dragon said something to her?

Everyone else watched Tayhei in surprise as well, obviously confused as to why she was acting so strangely. It seemed as though all of them were rendered speechless as they watched her, their mouths hanging open in puzzlement. But when Tayhei reached the black Capsule Car and threw the door open, Trunks shook himself out of it and ran to her side.

“Where are you going? What’s wrong with you?” He demanded, pressing his hand on the door to shut it.

“It’s none of your fucking business.” Tayhei snarled at him, then yanked the door open again, knocking Trunks off balance. She climbed into the car and started it up instantly, slamming the door shut behind her. She revved the engine twice, her eyes focused solely in front of her. She ignored Trunks’s persistent pounding on the window and merely shot off and into the air, nearly running over them in the process. Marron watched as the small black car flew into a corner and jetted down over the edge of the lookout, disappearing from view. She wasn’t quite sure that someone in Tayhei’s condition should be driving; it didn’t seem very safe to her.

Trunks was about to follow when Dende suddenly stepped forward and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. His dark eyes were calm and his face was a mixture of concern and satisfaction. “Let her go.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Bra asked timidly, bringing a hand up to her mouth and nervously chewing on her nails. “Didn’t the dragon give her what she asked for?”

Dende seemed to think about that question for quite awhile, his fingers tapping along the edges of his walking stick. Marron thought that she had rarely ever seen anyone that looked so incredibly wise. Piccolo had that same look sometimes, but Dende was so quiet and so gentle that it made him seem even more like a deity. The Namek smiled faintly, looking back towards the spot where Tayhei’s Capsule Car had disappeared from view. “Yes and no. Sometimes what we wish for isn’t necessarily what we truly want.”

Marron furrowed her brow, not sure what Dende had meant. She was used to the Namek using cryptic phrases, but she had thought that Dende could have at least given them a straight answer about this. Then again, Dende knew a lot of things that most other people did not know. If for some reason, he deemed the reason for Tayhei’s behavior as something that should be kept secret, then she definitely wouldn’t argue. It was best not to question things that came from Dende. From the edge of the lookout, he could see the entire world --- not just the hills and the oceans, but the people in it as well. He could see inside hearts and sense what was troubling someone’s soul. He wasn’t just wise because he was a Namek; he was wise because he saw everything and let it all soak into his mind and his heart. She had no doubt that he knew what was so obviously troubling Tayhei, but if he did not wish to divulge that information, then that was okay. She knew that he must have his reasons.

She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and stepped hesitantly towards the edge of the lookout, lowering her head to avoid the swaying palms. At the very edge of the white tiled floor, she looked out across the world, peering down below the clouds. She couldn’t see everything --- not the way that Dende could anyway. But she could see much farther than she had ever seen before, past the horizon and into the most distant areas of the world. She wondered if she would ever go there; if she would ever be strong enough to leave this place that she loved and experience new things. Her mother would have encouraged her to go, would have wanted her to grow. She had always strived to live life to the fullest --- had always wanted more than fate had afforded her. Her mother would have wanted to see the world too; she would have wanted to experience anything and everything. That was just the way that she was --- a person who always wished to be something more. It broke Marron’s heart to know that it would never happen now, to know that her mother had experienced all that she was going to experience.

And even worse, she hated it that her mother’s life had to end so badly. After all that she had been through, couldn’t fate have afforded her a nice, peaceful death? Her mother had died knowing that she was a murderer, knowing that she was a dangerous monster. And that really wasn’t the case at all. Rightfully, her mother should have died at an old, old age, after living the life that she deserved and experiencing the things that she wanted to experience. Juunana-gou too, deserved much more than he had been given. Both of them had already suffered enough in life; they had had everything taken from them: their lives, their memories, their dreams. And again they had been tortured, just because one man had decided that he wanted to destroy the earth. It was funny how the simple actions of one person could manage to affect so many people in the end. Dr. Gero had caused everyone to suffer in some small way --- whether it was just watching the horrifying attacks on the news or actually experiencing it firsthand. He had started a chain reaction that began and ended with cruelty and terror. And she hoped that somewhere, he was getting the punishment that he deserved for it.

“We should probably pick up the operating room a bit before I go and make my statement to the press.” Mirai Bulma said quietly, bending over to pick up the overturned tray that had held all of the operating instruments. It was a little singed on the side, but still in fairly good condition. Unlike the rest of the operating room, it had at least managed to stay in one piece. She straightened back up and brushed it off quickly, replacing it on the table that it had come from. “They’re going to want to take pictures and I don’t want them to see the place looking like this. It’s bad enough that I’ve already endangered the lives of two innocent civilians. They don’t need to see what the extent of that danger actually was. If we could just sweep up the ashes and get rid of some the blood, it will look presentable enough. I’m glad that you had the sense to tell those protestors something, Trunks. They would have been barging in here otherwise and doing who knows what to all of us. You know how violent people can get when their loved ones are killed.”

Vejiita snorted. “As if they could do any damage.”

She noted that he hadn’t moved to pick anything up. He was still standing in the corner of the room with his arms crossed and a sour expression, as if picking up wreckage was not something that a Saiya-jin prince was accustomed to doing. Everyone was else was helping, though. Trunks, who had an enormous amount of experience with things like this, was picking things up incredibly quickly and wiping them down with a damp cloth, making them shine again. Dr. Cho and his assistant were sweeping up the rest of the ashes with a small broom and a dustpan, appearing as though both of them would just rather not be here at all. And even Kuririn was helping them to clean the operating room a little; he had carried Juuhachi-gou over the standing operating table and was now trying to pick up the broken pieces of the other one. His expression was unreadable, but at least he wasn’t crying any longer. She felt sorry for him --- she knew what it felt like to lose someone. She reminded herself that she needed to have a talk with him later before she left for the future world. She had a few things to say that might help him through the grieving process.

“My point is that there are a lot of angry people out there who want some answers. And if they don’t get their answers, people are going to get hurt.” She explained calmly, trying to avoid Vejiita’s dark gaze. She didn’t like talking about those awful days in the future world. It was bad enough that they were fighting against the jinzouningen, but when they started fighting amongst themselves, it had been horrible. It had taken her several years to get it under control, but there were quiet undertones of violence even today in the future world. “You weren’t around in the future timeline when that started to happen, but people grew very, very violent. They started trying to take jinzouningen matters into their own hands and ended up killing each other instead. That was one of the reasons why I decided to start building the Underground City and its networks; not just to protect everyone from the jinzouningen, but to protect them from hurting themsel---”

She broke off when she heard a muffled sound, steady and quick coming from the left side of the room. It was coming in second intervals, growing stronger with every tone. Her deep blue eyes narrowed as she looked around the room, and noticed that everyone else was looking confused as well. Even Vejiita was looking around the room as if he were trying to decipher where that annoying sound was coming from. Then the recognition hit her instantly and she flew across the room, stumbling over the leg of the broken operating table. She moved aside a table and one of the plastic hospital chairs and stood before the hospital monitors expectantly. They had been coated thickly with dust after the fire had been put out, but when she swiped her hand across one of the monitors, she was met with a bright green line snaking across the screen in a familiar zigzagging motion.

“The heart monitor….” She breathed in shock. Then she whirled around and met Kuririn’s frightened eyes, her hand still resting on the screen. “Kuririn, Is Juuhachi-gou still hooked up to the heart monitor?”

He nodded silently, moving his eyes back and forth from the monitor to Juuhachi-gou. Everyone in the room seemed to be holding their breath, and it was so quiet that the gentle pulsing of the heart monitor sounded like a gong. She pushed away from the monitor and stumbled across the room again to her computer; she had already turned the screen off earlier, but she flipped the switch back on again and typed quickly, bringing up the diagram of Juuhachi-gou’s body. When the image appeared on the screen, her legs nearly gave out; she grasped onto the edge of the table and stared in disbelief. All of Juuhachi-gou’s vital organs had been revived and were working; her heart was beating steadily, and the brain wave activity was nearly at a conscious level. She brought her hands up to her mouth in disbelief, the backs of her eyes pricking with a fresh new round of tears.

“She….she….She’s alive.” She whispered so quietly that she could barely even hear her own voice. She raised her eyes up over the computer monitor and then switched the diagram to the bigger screen --- so that everyone could see the miracle that she was seeing. “She’s recovered completely.”

Dr. Cho furrowed his brow and adjusted his glasses, looking happy and puzzled at the same time. “But how?”

“I don’t know!” Mirai Bulma exclaimed, finally breaking out into a smile. Nervous laughter poured out of her, brought on by the hours and hours of stress that had been building up in her system. She shook her head and typed a code into the computer, bringing up the diagram records from the past hour; maybe she would find an answer if she looked back and saw when Juuhachi-gou’s body had actually started to come back to life. “Perhaps the explosion didn’t do as much damage as we thought! Maybe her system was just shut down and she finally came back. It could have had something to do with the computer chip that we removed right before the examination table exploded. Or maybe the heart monitor itself was damaged in the explosion. Those cables could have gotten twisted or broken….perhaps there is a short somewhere in the system? I just don’t know. It’s a miracle, it really is.”

She watched Kuririn’s face as she said this, watched him look over at Juuhachi-gou with an expression that she could not read. Then his dark eyes slowly gathered tears until they overflowed, washing down his cheeks and mixing with the dust and ash. He walked to her side slowly, as if he wasn’t sure if his legs were working or not, then fell to his knees beside the operating table. He reached up to grab his wife’s hand and held on for dear life, still crying. She could only imagine what he was feeling. If someone told her that her own Vejiita was still alive, she would have been a mess; she didn’t think that she would be able to stop crying for days. It was such a beautiful, astounding miracle that she could feel it in every bone of her body. The absolute joy of it completely filled her lonely heart in a way that hadn’t happened for years. As she stared at Kuririn and his wife, knowing that they would be together again --- knowing that she was completely human now, her own eyes began to fill with tears. It was amazing, truly amazing. In her lifetime, she had been given so little joy and even less miracles. She knew that she would never forget this moment. It was the moment when her faith in hope and miracles was restored.

“There are no miracles, woman.” Vejiita snarled at her quietly, under his breath so that only she would be able to hear. “This wasn’t just some freak accident.”

“Quit being such an ass, Vejiita. How would you explain what happened? Besides, there are many definitions of miraculous.” She snapped back at him with her eyes narrowed. It was really just like him to try and bring down the happy moment. There was no way that it could be anything but a miracle. She knew that it wasn’t anything that she had done; it was true that they had managed to turn Juuhachi-gou back into a human before she had been killed, but that was all. They hadn’t done anything special to her. And the fact that she was human made it even more amazing that she managed to survive Juunana-gou’s attack. Her body was already fragile since she was stitched up and in the middle of a surgery, but her protective jinzouningen biotechnology had been taken out as well. She had been completely defenseless. It truly had been a miracle that she was alive now; there was no other way to explain it. Fate had finally given them a gift. After all these years, things were finally starting to turn around.

Water and fog swirled all around her, so thick that it made it difficult for her to breathe. She felt as though she were floating through it, creeping upwards towards the brightness over her head, her arms and legs unable to move. There were no colors here, only different shades of gray that seemed to shimmer before her eyes, cords of it twisting and turning through the ripples of water. Her body felt weightless and light; like a feather she continued to drift upwards towards the source of that pure white light. Her heart was peaceful --- more peaceful than it had ever been before, and there was a beautiful feeling of exhilaration fluttering quietly in her soul. As she neared the surface, the light grew brighter and she began to hear voices. They weren’t the dark, ugly voices that she had heard before at times like this, but delighted whispers and joyful cheers, sounding melodic and beautiful to her ears. She rose above the fog and her mind began to drain out the water, the haze of unconsciousness seeping out of her and falling back down towards the sea of gray.

The first thing that she felt was pain. It echoed through every part of her, dull but steady, as if someone were pressing down on every inch of her skin. Instead of being frightened of the pain, she soaked it all up greedily, for this was the first time that she had ever truly felt it. And then she knew, without even having to open her eyes are here it from anyone else. She was human. She was completely human. Relief flooded through her quick and deep and her heart, which had been cold for so long, began to warm in her chest, aching pleasantly. She could hold her daughter now --- really hold her. She would be able to feel more than just affection for Kuririn; her heart was alive enough to be able to feel the love that she knew was in her soul for him. She would be able to cry real tears and feel real fear. And when she laughed, she would actually be able to feel the joy bubbling up in her heart. For the first time, she was truly normal. And she wanted to experience it all. She wanted to live her life to the absolute fullest, cherishing every single moment.